Index futures are down around 9 a.m. ET and gold futures have dropped 1.2% to $1,293. The move sends SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) down 1% in premarket trading and sets up the gold-mining sector for a loss. Bond prices are falling and yield on the 10-year Treasury has jumped to 2.72%.

But hold on a second.

Any “taper, taper!” signal in the jobs data is a message the market has already heard, Miller Tabak’s Andrew Wilkinson writes clients this morning.

The need potentially to get stingier came through months ago when the Fed began to argue 2013′s job-market improvement could be significant enough to reduce its asset purchases:

[T]his is not likely to be as bad for bonds as the knee-jerk reaction suggests. We have argued that the forward-guidance measure is filtering through and is replacing the onset of tapering as the preeminent market driver. We have seen what the impact of a spike in yields is. Meanwhile we have learned that optimal control settings will leave the fed fund rate lower than anyone had anticipated. Yields need not take it in the neck today, while stocks will soon start embracing the rosier outlook for consumption from better payroll growth.

In the meantime, in case there are doubts: It really is all about the Federal Reserve.

About Focus on Funds

As exchange-traded funds and other investing vehicles have ballooned in number, the task of figuring out what works well and what doesn’t has only gotten harder. Barrons.com’s Focus on Funds looks under the hood of ETFs, mutual funds and hedge funds for overlooked values, actionable ideas and the latest pitfalls for fund investors.

Chris Dieterich has covered the U.S. stock market for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. He is a graduate of Regis University and the Missouri School of Journalism.